Delivery workers have seen it all

Feature on some of the strange things delivery workers have seen. Connecticut focus.

Erica Jacobson

Nancy Ouillette dispatches appliance delivery and service workers for Keith’s Appliance in Norwich, but what those workers end up doing when they reach customers’ homes is completely out of her hands.

Some, Ouillette said, have acted as impromptu baby-sitters while homeowners ducked out to the bank to get payment for their purchase. Others have turned detective, tracing soggy basement floors not to washing machines in need of repair but to leaky hot water heaters. And at least one crew was asked if it could hop over a missing step or two as it hoisted an appliance up a set of third-floor stairs.

Monday night’s attack on a man delivering Chinese food to a Taftville apartment is definitely the exception rather than the norm in eastern Connecticut, according to those who work at businesses that make home deliveries.

Usually anything else goes — from pickup games of basketball to overzealous canines to tips paid in those tokens handed out by a local grocery store — in a region where customers routinely get food, heating fuel, appliances and even crates of soda delivered to their homes.

“They all carry dog biscuits,” Dan Drago, general manager of Andersen Oil in Ledyard, said of his employees’ efforts to pacify canines. “Usually the guys are there at the house maybe five or 10 minutes — it doesn’t take long to make a delivery. It’s kind of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing.”

Bill Potvin, one of four brothers who run Hosmer Mountain Soda in Willimantic, said the company’s Saturday delivery routes often are where delivery workers meet most of their customers.

“I’ve been offered coffee or a beer every now and then,” Potvin said. “In our business, you become friends with people. I can remember showing off with some kids at the basketball hoop.”

Surprised by Flowers

Brent Demicco delivers flowers for his family’s business, Jewett City Greenhouses and Florist. He said early morning deliveries often catch people off guard -- perhaps even as they're still in their robes.

“If somebody’s calling for a pizza, they know it’s coming,” Demicco said. “There we are with the flowers and obviously they’re happy about the flowers, but they’re surprised, too.”

Just because someone knows a pizza is coming doesn’t mean they’re properly prepared, said local pizzeria operators.

Students at Eastern Connecticut State University can take 20 minutes between the time they leave their dorm room and when they arrive at the lobby to claim their food, according to Josh Niles at Papa Gino’s in Willimantic.

In the 15 months Spencer Haddad, 18, of Norwich has worked as a delivery driver for Voc’s Westside Pizza, he’s been tipped in coupons and Big Y discount tokens, as well as been handed coffee cups full of change as payment to take back to the Norwich pizzeria and sandwich shop.

He also delivered a pizza to a guy who was in the middle of being arrested by the police.

“He told me to leave the pizza on the counter and pointed out where the money was,” Haddad said.

Ouillette said some of the stranger stories from her delivery workers have actually led to changes in how Keith’s conducts business. Customers are expected to pay in advance now rather than scramble to pay delivery workers.

“One person said, ‘Can you watch my kid while I go to the bank and I’ll get your money?’ ” Ouillette said of a delivery done before the change. “And what do you do? You’re going to wait, because $600 is $600.”

Contact Erica Jacobson at ejacobs@norwichbulletin.com.

BREAKOUT

Delivery drivers fall into a category ranked eighth most dangerous by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2005. In that year, 993 drivers, sales workers and truck drivers were killed on the job. About 10 percent of those drivers killed, 99, were listed as “truck drivers, light or delivery services.”

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Wicked Local Plainville ~ 159 South Main St., Plainville, MA 02762 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service